[1] The Plain Dealer newspaper reported on June 14, 1851, that the city was close to reaching a deal to purchase 60 acres (240,000 m2) on the north side of Kinsman Avenue just east of St. John Cemetery.

[7] The city council approved the sale of timber from the land in April in order to finance improvements,[1] and by July work on grading roads and pathways, platting, and landscaping were well under way.

[28] A large number of monuments and mausoleums, many of which received high praise from The Plain Dealer for their aesthetic beauty, were erected in the cemetery in its first two years.

[40] The city council selected lot 22 in section 14, near the Woodland Avenue main gate, for the site of the memorial in April 1863.

[41] The local funerary monument firm of Myers, Uhl, & Co. sculpted the piece from Italian marble, based on Brown's design.

[44] On December 2, 1863, the Cleveland City Council set aside several lots in Section 14 at Woodland Cemetery for the burial of Creighton, Crane, and their immediate family members.

The cemetery sexton opened the northern half of the site in early 1864, and by April it had been cleared of underbrush and most of its roads and pathways laid out, graded, and graveled.

The amount of water needed by the cemetery rose as more areas were properly landscaped, and the explosive residential, industrial, and retail growth in the surrounding neighborhood placed a significant burden on groundwater supplies.

[53] The death of Ohio Governor John Brough on August 29, 1865, in Cleveland led the city council to donate a lot at Woodland Cemetery for his interment.

[56] The city council's Committee on Parks and Public Grounds agreed to visit cemetery in June 1866 to ascertain its beautification needs.

[58] While the committee conducted its investigation, the city council decided on June 5, 1866, to authorize the erection of a pavilion at Woodland Cemetery to accommodate public speeches, events, and gatherings.

[63] The octagonal stone pavilion featured multiple modified Bochka roofs, alternating trefoil and round arched openings, and Gothic Revival decorative elements.

[67] The memorial was crafted from red granite quarried near Peterhead, Scotland, and manufactured by John M. Martin (a local monument dealer).

[83] As work on the northern section continued into 1870[84] and a new iron fence was built around the cemetery,[85] the trustees voted to authorize a new receiving vault.

[114][115] The gatekeeper's lodges at the west and north gates and the foreman's house were refurbished in 1882 as well, and several new northern sections graded and plotted.

The artist chosen to design the fountains was George Rackle,[o] a German immigrant who had gained fame as a sculptor of marble and granite funerary monuments in Columbus, Ohio.

At the base were four or five images of Palaemon (the child-god protector of fishermen and sailors in ancient Greek mythology) riding his traditional dolphin, emerging from oversized clamshells.

A fence was erected around the cemetery's stoneyard to screen it from view, a stone path was built from the Woodland Avenue gatehouse to the chapel,[125] and all walks were cindered.

[71] In 1869, a group of local businessmen pooled their resources to create the 285-acre (1,150,000 m2) Lake View Cemetery straddling the Cleveland-Cleveland Heights border on Cleveland's east side.

[130] The group was frustrated by the small budgets given to city-controlled cemeteries for maintenance, and they wanted a location with varied topography and plenty of water.

[131] A reporter for The Plain Dealer voiced the opinion that Lake View, with its hills, terraces, ravines, creeks, and huge size for large monuments, would prove to be far more popular than flat, crowded Woodland.

The city had yet to improve Main Drive, to cemetery officials laid a stone sidewalk from the chapel to the Quincy Avenue entrance to accommodate visitors.

Maintenance at the cemetery was minimal for the next few decades, leading to sunken graves, toppled headstones, long grass, piles of leaves, and numerous fallen limbs and trees.

In 1933, city officials discovered that Louise Dewald, the longtime secretary at Woodland, had stolen $19,000 ($447,208 in 2023 dollars) over the last several years from cemetery accounts.

Grave robbers had kicked open the doors and caved in the roofs of several mausoleums, scattering remains in their search for gold and jewelry.

At first, Day worked alone, volunteering to straighten headstones, lobbying local funerary monument companies to donate new markers for famous people, and visiting city archives to develop her own database of Woodland's burials.

[71] The group raised $8,000 ($11,755 in 2023 dollars) to replace the two missing eagle statues atop the graves of Civil War heroes William R. Creighton and Orrin J. Crane.

The foundation also began assembling the paperwork to document the military service of these African Americans, so that the United States Department of Veterans Affairs would supply them with a free headstone.

[178] The Woodland Cemetery Foundation placed headstones in 2014 on the unmarked graves of three Cleveland police officers who died in the line of duty.

The burying ground has a "profusion of well-designed monuments",[185] including many notable funerary works in the Egyptian Revival, Neoclassical, Richardsonian Romanesque, and Victorian architectural styles.